Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 14, No. 1 • Fall 2019 141 “Every Jolt Will Squash Their Guts”: Women’s Stagecoach Travel in Delarivier Manley’s Letters Y C I n late seventeenth-century England, travelling by stagecoach became increas- ingly popular. Growing numbers of English people took advantage of an improving coach service, including regular schedules and travel infrastructure that offered better roadways and hospitable inns, to navigate their country. Although it has been little studied, there is evidence that seventeenth-century women formed part of this new expanding group of domestic travelers. How did they experience this relatively new mode of transportation which created a public space that jum- bled together all sorts of people across gender and class? What from the female point of view are the pleasures and pains of stagecoach travel? This essay explores the effects of women’s increased mobility with the expansion of stagecoach ser- vices as it is depicted in Delarivier Manley’s epistolary travelogue titled Letters Writen by Mrs. Manley (1696), 1 and focuses on how her account refutes the gendered assumptions in pamphlets and periodicals that portray single women’s stagecoach travel as unvirtuous and dangerous. 1 Manley’s Letters was reprinted in 1725 under the new title A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter. This title, highlighting the transportation method, testifies to the fact that Manley’s subject of women travelling by stagecoach during the 1690s was still relevant to the readers of the 1720s.